Situated on Florida’s West Coast just one hour south of Tampa and two hours from Orlando, in beautiful Sarasota, Fla., Nathan Benderson Park is a community park providing public access to a picturesque lake.

Nathan Benderson Park was built to FISA racing standards and has 8 x 13.5 meter lanes. The race course specifications include 2,180 meters in length, 630 meters wide and on average six meters deep. In addition to the race course, the lake has multiple 1,500-meter warm-up and cool-down lanes.

Nathan Benderson Park lake was created as a man-made borrow pit, spring fed with additional surface water holding capacity. The 161.8 hectares lake was previously used for mining sand and shell. Since then, the open pit was filled by the Cooper Creek drainage basin and the underground aquifer system.

The completed venue consists of a state of the art floating wave attenuator platform that doubles as a dedicated TV lane for broadcast requirements, exclusive 3m wide paved coaches cycle path.

The venue hosted a spectacular and successful 2017 World Rowing Championships, which was attended by 921 athletes from 68 countries.

World Rowing Championships are open to all member federations. A rower may compete in an under 23 rowing event until December 31 of the year in which he or she reaches the age of 22.